Maria Luisa F. Torres 
 
 
dramas which told of the individual angst of the western world, the 
alienation of modern man, the human dilemma in a capitalist society, 
while, by and large, the folk theater continued to survive, using 
basically the same traditional forms, although now relegated to the 
village communities and the rural areas. As in the western models, the 
categories dichotomizing high and low culture, theater forms, art and 
literature, became the norms against which theater was measured. 
Expressionism, Realism, Avantgardism - Philippine theater had them all. 
Even Brecht was not spared especially in the academe in which his 
plays were seen as "classics" in the sense of the trappings and

spectacles of high art. So, there was supposedly Brechtian acting, 
staging, movements, understood quite confusedly, which were all 
transplanted into the legitimate stage where they represented some 
kind of novelty waiting to become a fad. The elitism was most 
pronounced in plays presented in which the more "novel" and the
least 
easy to comprehend the play was - due partly to stylistic excesses - the

more it met the standards of bourgeois aesthetics which was held 
paramount. As the legitimate theater, derived from the western world of 
the 20th century, entertained a small coterie of Filipinos who had been 
trained and educated in the American universities, the majority of the 
Philippine population who live in the rural areas were entertained by 
essentially the same theater forms they had known for many years. 
     Yet, while the hegemonic discourse of colonial and neo-colonial 
Philippine society in culture found expression in those theater forms, 
they, too, embodied the counter-hegemonic struggle for national 
emancipation and freedom. As theater reproduced the existing social 
relationships, it also subverted the very status quo. The feudal and 
colonial order of the society showed its cracks even in its seemingly 
solid structure. The metrical romance from which was derived the 
komedya, for example, also embodies the very contradictions in the 
society, divided as it is in cultural, economic political, and sectoral 
interests, to underscore the unevenness in the mode of production and 
the inequality in the existing social structures. In Balagtas's Florante
at 
Laura (ca. 1838) these cracks would become the very basis of 
demystification, itself becoming a demystifying strategy. While the 
usual komedya portrayed the Muslim Filipino as the villain and the 
Christian, the hero, in Balagtas' work the Muslim is not the devil 
reincarnate, nor is the Christian the epitome of all that is holy and good

and messianic. In his epic narrative, Aladin, the Muslim, saves Florante,

the Christian, from imminent death, and fights with him in toppling down

an oppressive and tyrannical ruler. Understandably, his work 
symbolized for many generations of Filipino nationalists, including the 
Philippine national hero, Jose Rizal, the Philippine resistance during the

Spanish regime. As it exposed the contradictions in Philippine society 
under Spain, it also expressed the people's desire to become sovereign 
and build a more egalitarian society. 
    The complex ideological processes at work in traditional theater 
can be further suggested by the transformation of the sarsuwela in the 
early years of American rule. As in the work of Balagtas, the sarsuwela 
became a political allegory with the characters representing ideas 
 
 
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